As I was doing a little research for an upcoming article on the negative effects of poor eating patterns of female athletes, I had 3 papers in a row come to the same surprising conclusion that applies to athletes, non-athletes, males, females, dogs, cats, and anything else that severely reduces their daily caloric intake to help lose weight.
According to the authors of a research paper entitled “Relationship between energy deficits and body composition in elite female gymnasts and runners.”
These data suggest that within-day energy deficits (measured by frequency and/or magnitude of deficit) are associated with higher body fat percentage in both anaerobic and aerobic elite athletes, possibly from an adaptive reduction in the REE. These data should discourage athletes from following restrained or delayed eating patterns to achieve a desired body composition.
That’s also almost exactly what Barbara Richardson found when she studied collegiate female sand volleyball athletes in her paper entitled “The Relationship between Moderate, Within Day Protein Intake and Energy Balance on Body Composition of Collegiate Sand Volleyball Players.”
And not surprising Julie Paszkiewicz found the same thing when she studied elite female gymnasts in her paper entitled “Relationship Between Daily Protein Distribution and Body Composition in Elite Gymnasts.”
Starvation diets do NOT work long-term.
Yes, you will lose weight initially. Unfortunately, you’ll also be tired, hungry, crabby, have menstrual irregularities, headaches, and a handful of other symptoms. Over the long-term though, one of two things will happen:
- You will continue to starve yourself, continually decreasing the number of calories you eat until you end up in the hospital with any number of complications associated with inadequate nutrition.
- Your weight loss will come to a screeching halt because your body thinks you’re literally starving so it shuts down as many unnecessary metabolic processes as it possibly can and causes hormonal chaos. You’ll become depressed, and end up weighing more than when you started.
Not a pretty picture…
What Does Work?
Some of us are born with great genetics. We can eat almost anything we want, exercise just a little bit, and still look almost like we did in high school (+ 10 pounds or so). Ignore those people. They are outliers.
For those of us that aren’t blessed with great genes (or so I say jeans, ha), we have to work a little harder and a little smarter. The changes we make must become habits. Habits are a lot easier to create if they aren’t drastic. We recommend:
- Calculating your daily caloric intake and then eating 300-400 calories less. Cutting just enough calories to create a deficit prevents your body from sounding the starvation alarm.
- Exercise daily. That doesn’t mean you have to hit the gym daily. Take a walk outside, ride a bike, zip through cleaning the house, take the stairs instead of the elevator, etc. Just move daily.
- Lift weights. Ladies, I can promise you this – lifting will NOT make you big. Lifting weights WHILE following an extremely high protein diet and injecting steroids will. If you, a normal lady filled with estrogen, progesterone, and a little bit of testosterone, lift weights, the only thing you’ll probably notice is an increase in your metabolism, which is a GREAT thing. It makes losing weight much, much easier.
- Find your holes and plug them. Although I’m not a fan of Dr. Oz at all, a few weeks ago he had a dietician on the show who had an excellent recommended – the “100 calorie” fix. She encouraged her clients, even before calorie counting or starting a new diet, to find 100 calories a day in their current eating habits, and fix it. Instead of 2 cans of soda per day, reduce it to 1 can and add a bottle of water. Instead of an entire bag of M&M’s, eat a small, bite-sized bag. She said she’d often have clients that found and plugged enough holes they didn’t have to even start a diet.
And if you still need a little push, click here to learn about our new upcoming contest called the 3500 56 Day Transformation.
